pet sematary Elsanna Edition
by elsannafan55
Summary: Dr. Elsa Winters and her wife, Anna, relocate from Chicago to rural Maine with their two young children. The couple soon discover a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near their new home. When tragedy strikes, Elsa turns to her neighbour Kai Davidson, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unspeakable evil with horrific consequences. give it a read.
1. chapter 1

Elsa Winters who had lost her father at three and who had never known a grandfather, never expected to find a father as she entered her middle age, but that was exactly what happened . . . although she called this man a friend, as a grown woman must do when she finds the man who should have been her father relatively late in life. She met this man on the evening she and her wife and her two children moved into the big white frame house in Ludlow. Winston Churchill moved in with them. Church was her daughter Maria's cat. The search committee at the university had moved slowly, the hunt for a house within commuting distance of the university

to be—all the landmarks are right . . . like the astrological signs the night before Caesar was assassinated, Elsa thought morbidly—they were all tired and tense and on edge. Michael was cutting teeth and fussed almost ceaselessly. He would not sleep, no matter how much Anna sang to him. She offered him the breast even though it was off his schedule. Michael knew his dining schedule as well as she—better, maybe—and he promptly bit her with his new teeth. Anna, still not entirely sure about this move to Maine from Chicago, where she had lived her whole life, burst into tears. Maria promptly joined her. In the back of the station wagon, Church continued to pace restlessly as he had done for the last three days it had taken them to drive here from Chicago. His yowling from the cat kennel had been bad, but his restless pacing after they finally gave up and set him free in the car had been almost as unnerving. Elsa herself felt a little like crying. A wild but not unattractive idea suddenly came to her: She would suggest that they go back to Bangor for something to eat while they waited for the moving van, and when her three hostages to fortune got out, she would floor the accelerator and drive away without so much as a look back, foot to the mat, the wagon's huge four-barrel carburetor gobbling expensive gasoline. She would drive south, all the way to Orlando, Florida, where she would get a job at Disney World as a medic, under a new name. But before she hit the turnpike—big old 95 southbound—she would stop by the side of the road and put the fucking cat out too. Then they rounded a final curve, and there was the house that only she had seen up

until now. She had flown out and looked at each of the seven possibles they had picked from photos once the position at the University of Maine was solidly her, and this was the one she had chosen: a big old New England colonial (but newly sided and insulated; the heating costs, while horrible enough, were not out of line in terms of consumption), three big rooms downstairs, four more up, a long shed that might be converted to more rooms later on—all of it surrounded by a luxuriant sprawl of lawn, lushly green even in this August heat. Beyond the house was a large field for the children to play in, and beyond the field were woods that went on damn near forever. The property abutted state lands, the realtor had explained, and there would be no development in the foreseeable future. The remains of the Micmac Indian tribe had laid claim to nearly eight thousand acres in

Ludlow and in the towns east of Ludlow, and the complicated litigation, involving the federal government as well as that of the state, might stretch into the next century. Anna stopped crying abruptly. She sat up. "Is that—" "That's it," Elsa said. She felt apprehensive—no, she felt scared. In fact she felt terrified. She had mortgaged twelve years of their lives for this; it wouldn't be paid off until Maria was seventeen. She swallowed. "What do you think?" "I think it's beautiful," Anna said, and that was a huge weight off her chest—and off her mind. She wasn't kidding, she saw; it was in the way she was looking at it as they turned in the asphalted driveway that curved around to the shed in back, her eyes sweeping the blank windows, her mind already ticking away at such matters as curtains and oilcloth

for the cupboards, and God knew what else. "Mama?" Maria said from the back seat. She had stopped crying as well. Even Micheal had stopped fussing. Elsa savored the silence. "What, love?" Her eyes, blue under the darkish blond hair in the rearview mirror, also surveyed the house, the lawn, the roof of another house off to the left in the distance, and the big field stretching up to the woods. "Is this home?" "It's going to be, honey," she said. "Hooray!" she shouted, almost taking her ear off. And Elsa, who could sometimes become very irritated with Maria, decided she didn't care if she ever clapped an eye on Disney World in Orlando. She parked in front of the shed and turned off the wagon's motor. The engine ticked. In the silence, which

seemed very big after Chicago and the bustle of State Street and the Loop, a bird sang sweetly in the late afternoon. "Home," Anna said softly, still looking at the house. "Home," Micheal said complacently on her lap. Elsa and Anna stared at each other. In the rearview mirror, Maria's eyes widened. "Did you—" "Did he—" "Was that—" They all spoke together, then all laughed together. Michael took no notice; he only continued to suck his thumb. He had been saying "Ma" for almost a month now and had taken a stab or two at something that might have been "Mama" or only wishful thinking on Elsa's part. But this, either by accident or imitation, had been a real word. Home.

Elsa plucked Michael from her partner's lap and hugged him. That was how they came to Ludlow.


	2. chapter 2

in Elsa Winters memory that one moment always held a magical quality—partly, perhaps, because it really was magical, but mostly because the rest of the evening was so wild. In the next three hours, neither peace nor magic made an appearance. Elsa had stored the house keys away neatly (she was a neat and methodical woman, was Elsa Winters in a small manila envelope which she had labeled "Ludlow House—keys received June 29." She had put the keys away in the Fairlane's glove compartment. She was absolutely sure of that. Now they weren't there. While she hunted for them, growing increasingly irritated, Anna hoisted Micheal

seats for the third time when her daughter screamed and then began to cry. "Elsa!" Anna called. "She's cut herself." Maria had fallen from the tire swing and hit a rock with her knee. The cut was shallow, but she was screaming like someone who had just lost a leg, Elsa thought (a bit ungenerously). She glanced at the house across the road, where a light burned in the living room. "All right, Maria," she said. "That's enough. Those people over there will think someone's being murdered." "But it hurrrrts!" Elsa struggled with her temper and went silently back to the wagon. The keys were gone, but the first-aid kit was still in the glove compartment. She got it and came back.

When Maria saw it, she began to scream louder than ever. "No! Not the stingy stuff! I don't want the stingy stuff, Mama! No—" "Maria, it's just Mercurochrome, and it doesn't sting—" "Be a big girl," Anna said. "It's just—" "No-no-no-no-no—" "You want to stop that or your ass will sting," Elsa said. "She's tired, Elsa," Anna said quietly. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Hold her leg out." Maria put Micheal down and held Maria's leg, which Elsa painted with Mercurochrome in spite of her increasingly hysterical wails. "Someone just came out on the porch of that house across the street," Anna said. She picked Micheal up. He had started to crawl away through the grass.

Wonderful," Elsa muttered. "Elsa, she's—" "Tired, I know." She capped the Mercurochrome and looked grimly at her daughter. "There. And it really didn't hurt a bit. Fess up, Maria." "It does! It does hurt! It hurrrr—" Her hand itched to slap her and she grabbed her leg hard. "Did you find the keys?" Anna asked. "Not yet," Elsa said, snapping the first-aid kit closed and getting up. "I'll—" Micheal began to scream. He was not fussing or crying but really screaming, writhing in Anna's arms. "What's wrong with him?" Anna cried, thrusting him almost blindly at Elsa. It was, she supposed, one of the advantages of having chosen a doctor as a life partner—you could shove the kid at your partner whenever the kid seemed to be dying. "Elsa! What's—"

The baby was grabbing frantically at his neck, screaming wildly. Elsa flipped him over and saw an angry white knob rising on the side of Micheal's neck. And there was also something on the strap of his jumper, something fuzzy, squirming weakly. Maria, who had become quieter, began to scream again, "Bee! Bee! BEEEEEE!" She jumped back, tripped over the same protruding rock on which she had already come a cropper, sat down hard, and began to cry again in mingled pain, surprise, and fear. I'm going crazy, Elsa thought wonderingly. Wheeeeee! "Do something, Elsa! Can't you do something?" "Got to get the stinger out," a voice behind them drawled. "That's the ticket. Get the stinger out and put some baking soda on it. Bump'll go down." But the voice was so thick with Down East accent that for a

moment Elsas tired, confused mind refused to translate the dialect: Got t'get the stinga out 'n put some bakin soda on't. 'T'll go daown. She turned and saw an old man of perhaps seventy—a hale and healthy seventy—standing there on the grass. He wore a biballs over a blue chambray shirt that showed his thickly folded and wrinkled neck. His face was sunburned, and he was smoking an unfiltered cigarette. As Elsa looked at him, the old man pinched the cigarette out between his thumb and forefinger and pocketed it neatly. He held out his hands and smiled crookedly . . . a smile Elsa liked at once—and she was not a woman who "took" to people. "Not to tell you y'business, Doc," he said. And that was how Elsa met Kai Davidson, the man who should have been her father.


	3. chapter 3

**guys yes this is a Elsanna story just like my twilight one it even says it in the title if you don't like the subject don't click on the story.**

He had watched them arrive from across the street and had come across to see if he could help when it seemed they were "in a bit of a tight," as he put it. While Elsa held the baby on her shoulder, Davidson stepped near, looked at the swelling on Michael's neck, and reached out with one blocky, twisted hand. Anna opened her mouth to protest—his hand looked terribly clumsy and almost as big as Michael's head—but before she could say a word, the old man's fingers had made a single decisive movement, as apt and deft as the fingers of a man walking cards across his knuckles or sending coins into conjurer's limbo. And the stinger lay in his palm. "Big 'un," he remarked. "No prize-winner, but it'd do for a ribbon, I guess." Elsa burst out laughing.

Davidson regarded her with that crooked smile and said, "Ayuh, corker, ain't she?" "What did he say, Mommy?" Maria asked, and then Anna burst out laughing too. Of course it was terribly impolite, but somehow it was okay. Davidson pulled out a deck of Chesterfield Kings, poked one into the seamed corner of his mouth, nodded at them pleasantly as they laughed—even Michael was chortling now, in spite of the swelling of the bee sting—and popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail. The old have their tricks, Elsa thought. Small ones, but some of them are good ones. She stopped laughing and held out the hand that wasn't supporting Michael's bottom—Michael's decidedly damp bottom. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr.—" "Kai Davidson," he said and shook. "You're the doc, I guess." "Yes. Elsa Winters. This is my wife Anna, my daughter Maria, and the kid with the bee sting is Michael." "Nice to know all of you."

I didn't mean to laugh . . . that is, we didn't mean to laugh . . . it's just that we're . . . a little tired." That—the understatement of it—caused her to giggle again. She felt totally exhausted. Davidson nodded. "Course you are," he said, which came out: Coss you aaa. He glanced at Anna. "Why don't you take your little boy and your daughter over to the house for a minute, Missus Winters? We can put some bakin soda on a washrag and cool that off some. My wife would like to say hello too. She don't get out too much. Arthritis got bad the last two or three years." Anna glanced at Elsa, who nodded. "That would be very kind of you, Mr. Davidson." "Oh, I just answer to Kai," he said. There was a sudden loud honk, a motor winding down, and then the big blue moving van was turning—lumbering—into the driveway. "Oh Christ, and I don't know where the keys are," Elsa said.

That's okay," Davidson said. "I got a set. Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland—they that lived here before you—gave me a set, oh, must have been fourteen, fifteen years ago. They lived here a long time. Joan Cleveland was my wife's best friend. She died two years ago. Bill went to that old folks' apartment complex over in Orrington. I'll bring em back over. They belong to you now, anyway." "You're very kind, Mr. Davidson," Anna said. "Not at all," he said. "Lookin forward to having young 'uns around again." Except that the sound of this, as exotic to their Midwestern ears as a foreign language, was yowwuns. "You just want to watch em around the road, Missus Winters. Lots of big trucks on that road." Now there was the sound of slamming doors as the moving men hopped out of the cab and came toward them. Maria had wandered away a little, and now she said, "Mama, what's this?" Elsa, who had started to meet the

moving men, glanced back. At the edge of the field, where the lawn stopped and high summer grass took over, a path about four feet wide had been cut, smooth and close. It wound up the hill, curved through a low stand of bushes and a copse of birches, and out of sight. "Looks like a path of some kind," Elsa said. "Oh, ayuh," Davidson said, smiling. "Tell you about it sometime, missy. You want to come over and we'll fix your baby brother up?" "Sure," Maria said and then added with a certain hopefulness: "Does baking soda sting?"


End file.
